Online courses

[greytowhite]

He is not worried if it is Tai chi any of the internals would do
If it’s possible could you show some links
I would love to know what each of you got out of certain courses and which parts meant the most to you

I updated the original recommendations with links.

[PQS1]

Probably not going to be a popular choice on here,but, I would recommend Adam Mizners' Discover Taiji. I have been doing it for 30 weeks and am thoroughly enjoying it. Although to be fair I am also having instruction with one of his instructors twice a week and have attended a seminar with Andy Mack.
Regards
Peter

[everything]

Probably not going to be a popular choice on here,but, I would recommend Adam Mizners' Discover Taiji. I have been doing it for 30 weeks and am thoroughly enjoying it. Although to be fair I am also having instruction with one of his instructors twice a week and have attended a seminar with Andy Mack.
Regards
Peter

How do you think you’d review it if no live in person instruction?

[PQS1]

Probably not going to be a popular choice on here,but, I would recommend Adam Mizners' Discover Taiji. I have been doing it for 30 weeks and am thoroughly enjoying it. Although to be fair I am also having instruction with one of his instructors twice a week and have attended a seminar with Andy Mack.
Regards
Peter

How do you think you’d review it if no live in person instruction?

Very good to be fair .Starts up with a warm up exercises moves onto Huang version of CMQ form then includes Huang's loosening exercises, plus some standing exercises etc.
Had previously studied under Nigel Sutton's group in the UK for a couple of years and since I moved to Scotland from London really like it.

[origami_itto]

I think the online stuff can be okay for basics, and staying engaged and improving if you have a good base. Alex has form classes on Facebook.

[Sajite]

[charlie_cambridge]

Guillem Bernardo (head instructor at Patrick Kelly's school in Shanghai) has a site taijistream.com

There's another thread on Adam Mizner on this site, won't rehash, you can search that. Will say Adam is not a correct representation of Huang's loosening exercises. Adam studied a few year's with a student of Patrick Kelly and was kicked out for blatantly making up false information. No comment or interest in discussing anything else Adam does other than to say it has nothing to do with the internals Huang taught. Despite what the marketing seems to imply to many people Adam neither met Huang nor studied with him, and I don't believe can cite an actual teacher in Huang's lineage who he studied with for more than a few years (other than PK's student who kicked him out). When I pointed this out to senior US students of Adam in the past they deflected to say he also studies some "secret hidden Yang lineage" and that stuff is "better than Huang Xingxian's stuff." Since it was secret and unreferenced I have no way to evaluate the claim and have no interest in doing so. But publicly I think they still lean heavily on the supposed Huang connection in their marketing (with enough deniability to say "they never claimed Adam was Huang's student" whenever anyone in the actual lineage calls them out on it).

Probably not going to be a popular choice on here,but, I would recommend Adam Mizners' Discover Taiji. I have been doing it for 30 weeks and am thoroughly enjoying it. Although to be fair I am also having instruction with one of his instructors twice a week and have attended a seminar with Andy Mack.
Regards
Peter

How do you think you’d review it if no live in person instruction?

Very good to be fair .Starts up with a warm up exercises moves onto Huang version of CMQ form then includes Huang's loosening exercises, plus some standing exercises etc.
Had previously studied under Nigel Sutton's group in the UK for a couple of years and since I moved to Scotland from London really like it.

[wayne hansen]

Reminds me of a student of mine called Roger who I asked to leave
There are a lot of students who claim a greater connection to Huang than they actually had
However I don’t see much difference in how Miz does the 5 to how most do them
I would love to know what difference you see

[charlie_cambridge]

Any public youtube clip of Huang doing the 5 is deliberately wrong. PK has stories of Huang collecting videos taken of his inner school classes to "review" (and said tapes disappearing never to be mentioned again).

Guillem has a free basic intro to the 5 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_51xRJfQ7Xo
And of course more details on his online course.

As one simple example I'd note the shoulders and elbows in the 1st and 2nd: most people lift the shoulders and elbows at the same time and drop them both at the same time. This cuts off the wave of elastic power and is the reason why many people shove in the push hands--they are unable to correctly wave the power from the foot through the center then back/shoulder blades then arms because they don't have the correct motor control in the arms.

Instead the shoulder blades should actually be dropping in the back at the same time the elbows are still activating (physically going up and out).

I.e. usually people activate the trapezius (and surrounding muscles) and the deltoid (and surrounding stuff) together, and deactivate them together. One of the basic things in the 1st and 2nd loosenings is teaching how to separate the motor control to simultaneously deactivate trapezius and surrounding while activating deltoid and surrounding. Huang's form emphasizes this in every single movement of the form.

In the link above you can see Guillem do it (amongst a number of other things), I recommend trying to follow along in real time with his instructions and not just watching (makes a boring movie but an interesting training to try to follow)

Reminds me of a student of mine called Roger who I asked to leave
There are a lot of students who claim a greater connection to Huang than they actually had
However I don’t see much difference in how Miz does the 5 to how most do them
I would love to know what difference you see

[wayne hansen]

Are you saying the Master of your system is duplicities
I don’t want to believe he would deliberately put out false information
That is a terrible story coming from those who have made a fortune out of his name

[charlie_cambridge]

All of the old teachers of his generation and before did the same thing. Nothing in the old form videos of all the old masters is accurate, they all did many things wrong on purpose. In their day and age that was considered more responsible than putting real martial techniques in the hands of complete strangers.

As for "those who have made a fortune out of his name" that was never what the art was for and more likely than not they were not his real students. Huang Xingxian had strict rules for his inner school including forbidding fighting for money or working as a bodyguard etc (i.e. using the skills for money that way)

PK never relied on teaching as a primary source of income and advises his students likewise, not to rely on teaching income (non martial art day job/means of support instead) so we can teach for the purpose of passing on the teaching not as a means of making a living.

Are you saying the Master of your system is duplicities
I don’t want to believe he would deliberately put out false information
That is a terrible story coming from those who have made a fortune out of his name

[Doc Stier]

With all due respect for the opinions of various teachers who are regularly cited on different thread topics here, none of the teachers mentioned are the generally accepted, end all, final word of authority on any of these topics.

Additionally, personal perception is reality for most people, based primarily upon their own knowledge and experience. Such perceptions are therefore highly subjective at best. Just saying. ymmv.

[everything]

think that's why for a beginner, most free classes will be fine. if someone wants to learn swimming, golf, tennis, whatever, that's true. for some stupid reason, this group jumps to "if you don't directly learn from phelps or woods or nadal, it's NOT GOOD ENOUGH OMG OMG NO-O"

[wayne hansen]

I just don’t believe Huang who had thousands of students would put out false information on purpose
I wasn’t aware PK taught fro free

[charlie_cambridge]

Why not? Have you met one teacher in Huang’s time in that cultural context who would openly share real martial skills with random strangers they never met? Are you implying that would be the ethical thing to do or a good idea?

Huang had his reasons (similar to all the old Chinese teachers at the time), and PK has his (not being Chinese and bound by those norms, changing times so the martial not so important for real life use, and PK’s belief that the real taiji has built in safeguard being subtle enough that rough people will never understand it, so PK does not feel the need to keep “secrets”) So my experience is PK does not have an “outer school” at all, he teaches more openly than anyone of that level I know of, and simply expects “inner school” level effort, and his classes are oversubscribed enough he has to turn people away anyway so he just turns away the ones not aligned in level of effort and motivations for training.

PK does not teach for free at the moment, but certainly does not make “a fortune” from teaching. His very oversubscribed (invite only) weeklong seminar for his longtime students has gone up to 700 Euros for a full week (8 hrs a day of classtime for a week)… up from 600 Euros 20 years ago.

I just don’t believe Huang who had thousands of students would put out false information on purpose
I wasn’t aware PK taught fro free